Dawngate Rebirth: Fans Continue The Series

It wasn’t just another MOBA. For me personally, Dawngate was easily an all-time favorite. The perfect mixture of intuitive, easy to understand, and deeply rewarding gameplay. The art design and characters were truly memorable. Among the dozens of startup MOBAs cropping up each month, finally one with promise! I will always miss my time in Dawngate, but I might just be able to return to that fondly remembered universe again.

Crafted by Waystone Games and (unfortunately) published by EA, Dawngate’s addition to the MOBA genre was making great headway until a cancellation was announced in late 2014. Fans of the series were shocked. It appeared EA made a profits decision to cancel, ruining yet another studio under their banner. This coming from a company highly regarded as evil by most gamers. It isn’t exactly uncommon to see lists of ruined titles and studios EA has shut down. There is also evidence pointing the other way. Statements that EA made the decision based on recent feedback from other free-to-play projects, and even wanting to release the game as open source. The community was left to wonder what happened. With no chance to save Dawngate, our only condolence would be the full refunds to anyone who had spent money during the beta.

The small, but excellently varied cast of the Dawngate shaper/hero selection.

At a time when a new low-quality MOBA seemed to be popping up every day, Dawngate was a breath of fresh air. Landing perfectly between the intensely difficult classic DotA 2, and the alternative League of Legends. Dawngate created a place for fans of the genre to gather away from the toxicity of the LoL community, while avoiding the insanely difficult transition to original DotA gameplay. This is a community that was so inspired by the game, that the game’s Subreddit is still active to this day. Nearly 2 years after the cancelled project. However, this isn’t the only community continuing the game’s memory to this day.

There are currently multiple projects in development by fans to continue Dawngate. It’s a large disappointment that copyright blocked EA or Waystone from releasing source files. Projects like these could have benefited greatly from this open source information. Unfortunately, due to copyright issues, Waystone was unable to follow through on their kind gesture. The development of projects listed below are taking place by slowly withdrawing assets from the old game files, and using engines like Unreal Engine 4 to replicate the original. The use of the original assets will most likely not be feasible for obvious copyright reasons, but progress looks good. With some tweaks to characters and graphics, a homage to Dawngate seems well on its way. Teams of a few people, or even solo developers, are managing these projects, so don’t expect anything too soon!

You can check out the YouTube channel BestMelvynEU who posts occasional updates showcasing development as well. This is where I stumbled across these projects in the first place. His video here is highly informative. Discussing Dawngate’s closure and revival projects with Rebirth’s developer ThorDG.